Life cycle sustainability assessment of non-beverage bottles made of recycled High Density Polyethylene

Abstract

The current plastic industry is associated with climate change, fossil fuel depletion and littering of plastic waste. To reduce these environmental impacts, companies and governmental bodies are increasingly adopting strategies based on the concept Circular Economy. However, circular decision-making is usually based on analyses that do not provide enough insights in every sustainability dimension, risking burden-shifting. In this study, environmental, economic and social life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques have been integrated into an overarching sustainability life cycle assessment (LCSA) to assess the impact of recycling High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) non-beverage bottles. The study assesses the impact in 11 environmental categories, the life cycle costs, and the social risks associated with the related economic sectors. An ad-hoc system expansion approach was developed to overcome the multifunctionality issue so commonly challenging in circular systems. The results indicate that using recycled HDPE leads to significant reductions in all the considered environmental categories. The economic analysis indicated that the material cost of recycled HDPE is slightly lower than for virgin HDPE, but the manufacturing costs are higher and highly dependent on the specific value chain. The social risks of recycling were found to be higher than for virgin plastic production, and mainly occurring outside the country where the recycling takes place (The Netherlands). Nevertheless, this analysis presents high uncertainty due to the heterogeneity in the recycling sector of the database. This study shows how the LCSA approach can be used to assess and compare the impacts and benefits of circular strategies and calls for further efforts to develop higher disaggregated social risk databases.